As it is becoming common in some circles, some folks like
to be purer than the virgin Mary. Groklaw has been for a
while expanding into new levels of fundamentalism. The ends
justify the means and all that:

That, to me, wasn't the news, since a Microsoft license was
submitted once before, although I gather not by the
company. But what I'm noticing is reactions. ComputerWorld
collected some truly astonishing responses, and if you follow
their links, it gets worse. First, though, the reaction that
matters, from Michael Tiemann:

Michael Tiemann, president of the non-profit Open Source
Initiative, said that provisions in three out of five of
Microsoft's shared-source licenses that restrict source code
to running only on the Windows operating system would
contravene a fundamental tenet of open-source licenses as laid
out by the OSI. By those rules, code must be free for anyone
to view, use, modify as they see fit.

"I am certain that if they say Windows-only machines, that
would not fly because that would restrict the field of use," said
Tiemann in an interview late Friday.

Why would this need to be said? What nerve Microsoft has to
even dream of trying for such a restriction. A license that
restricts use to only the Windows operating system. Why would
OSI even consider that? Have we lost our minds?

4. Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your
opponent's argument which you can easily knock down to make
yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make
up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your
interpretation of the opponent/opponent arguments/situation,
or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify
their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to
debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while
actually avoiding discussion of the real issues.

Microsoft has a number of licenses under the "Shared
Source" umbrella. Most of them are completely useless from an
open source standpoint. Michael Tiemann correctly points that
out and they would fail the test.

The only license that can be submitted for OSI approval is
the Microsoft
Permissive License (Ms-PL) and possibly the Microsoft
Community License (Ms-CL). The former is an Apache-like
license, the latter is a GPL-like license. Am personally
only interested in the first as that is what IronPython,
IronRuby, the Dynamic Language Runtime and the ASP.NET client
library are licensed under.

Groklaw goes on to rally up the troops over *other*
licenses that are not even under discussion. You would think
that this was so obvious that it did not need pointing out,
but I guess it needs pointing out.

Later Groklaw seems confused: how a company can have
software open sourced but not embrace it as an open source?

And does Microsoft want to be an Open Source company?
Puh-lease. They may want you to think that, but Steve Ballmer
just told the world that it can't embrace that model:

"Open source has been the issue that surrounds us. Could a
commercial model like Microsoft compete with open source? And
we've worked very hard on making the value of a commercial company
surpass what the open-source community can deliver, because
frankly, it's not a business model we can embrace. It's
inconsistent with shareholder value."

Does it get any clearer? And if they have no intention of
adopting that business model, the right question is: why are
they proposing open source licenses?

There is no contradiction here. It is only contradictory
if you live in a binary world world of black and white. Or
if you find images like this to be magic:

You can open source pieces of software, contribute to open
source projects and still not embrace open source as your
business model. It is easy to prove this by way of existing
examples. Consider IBM and Google: they use open source
software, they contribute to open source projects and they
fund open source development, but yet their business model is
not an open source model.

An ugly trend is the adoption of the absolutist mindsets.
"You are with us or you are against us". Well, for one, am
not with Groklaw and am not with Microsoft. My goal is to
make open source succeed as a platform and use open source for
all of my server and desktop activities. I see no problem
in taking open source contribution from companies that have
not embraced open source as their business model as long as
the code is open source. So I will happily consume open
source code produced by Google, IBM and even Microsoft.

Groklaw asks:

By the way, guys, check those license submissions
carefully. Do they exclude the GPL? Do they exclude
sublicensing or allow it only if the sublicensee contacts
Microsoft to get permission? How about if a licensee sells
the company?

Well, you would think they would have read the license, but
it is easier to get on a rage binge than actually reading the
licenses. There is no exclusion for the GPL or Copy-left
licenses, the only problem is that the GPL is incompatible
with pretty much anything, so chances are these will be
incompatible altough am no lawyer and I do not know for sure;
They do not exclude sublicensing and you do not need
permission from Microsoft, nor do you need to contact them if
you sell the company.

The rage binge continues:

In that connection, I suggest you look very, very carefully at
the IronRuby initiative. The first rule with Microsoft
proposals has to be: look for the devilish part. It won't be
obvious. Here's the license for it, Microsoft's Permissive
Licence, one of the shared source licenses. Is it Open Source?

Groklaw questions IronRuby motives and in the best
conspiracy theory tone ponders:

Is that the only question we should be asking? Here's another. Is
IronRuby Ruby? [...] Ruby with a Microsoft twist.

Obviously they do not know much about IronPython and
IronRuby and the trouble they went to in IronPython to remain
compatible with CPython. The troubles they went into to be
compatible have been explained numerous times, but they are
also available on Jim's Zen of
the DLR slide deck. I removed the OpenXML remarks as they
were just more pandering.

The article continues by mixing half-facts and speculation
as it is now a tradition over there:

In Ruby's case, my understanding is that it started as Ruby.NET under
the MIT license.

It has different goals, IronRuby is layered on top of the
DLR. They got permission to reuse the parser and tokenizer
from Ruby.NET which had done all the leg-work of figuring it
out (since Ruby does not have a formal language
specification).

The half facts continue:

Microsoft has added some WPF functions to it. WPF
stands for Windows Presentation Foundation. Some would tell you that
WPF threatens an open web, the W3c standards, and basically anything
involved with the open Internet. I don't know, not being a programmer,
but that's what I hear.

I will agree that you do not know what you are talking about.
IronRuby can call any CLI methods and classes just like
Ruby.NET and IronPython can (or, gasp, CPython extensions can
do so as well) . WPF being just a collection of .NET classes
they can be invoked by IronRuby.

Being able to call CLI code is why I can write IronRuby
applications that use Gtk# today on Linux without any changes
to IronRuby, there is no magic needed:

IronRuby Alpha running on Linux/x86 with Mono, calling
Gtk#.

LOOKOUT! ITS SPIDER PIG! MICROSOFT'S SECRET PLOT
TO OVERTAKE THE INTERNETS BY ADDING GTK# SUPPORT TO IRONRUBY!

Oh wait. Does that means that libraries are an evil plot
as well? Tune in next week at the same bat-time on the same
bat-channel for an answer.

Then, Groklaw tries a little of guilt
by association, always a fine choice in the most reputable
sophistry circles:

For me, it's enough of a warning that Miguel likes the MPL as
he did the patent deal and all things Microsoft. He says the license
is "by all intents and purposes an open source license". Whose
intents? And whose purposes? Remember Lily Tomlin's old joke? If love
is the answer, can you rephrase the question? And if this is "by all
intents and purposes an open source license" then maybe it's time to
look at that definition again.

Facts and legal terms mean nothing. If Miguel likes it, it
must be bad. I hope Groklaw gets nominated for "Best use of
Fallacies to Advance a Political Cause" award next year.

So if the license were to fit the open source
definition then "it's time to look at the definition
again". Why? Well, because Groklaw said so. Not
because "they know" as we already know that they barely
researched the subject.

Now am off to get some more work done on Moonlight,
which will serve two purposes: allow Linux users to access
Silverlight content and produce an ulcer on Groklaw's
posters.

Disclaimers

And as usual to avoid the usual round trip in the comments:

I speak for myself, I do not speak for
Novell;

This blog entry does not represents the views of
my employer.

I do not like Microsoft's overall business model,
I do not like the pricing, I do not like lock-in into
proprietary standards, do not like their patent
threats, nor do I endorse FUD (theirs or anyone else's).

Liking MsPL does not mean "endorsing Microsoft"
wholeheartedly.

I have been asking for collaboration between
Microsoft and the open source community for years, and
advocating it with their employees and representatives
at every turn in the past. Most recently, before I
even knew about the Microsoft/Novell agreement am on
the record
calling for such a thing.

I think that we have reached a sorry state when our
community has to resort to half-truths pandering with fear,
uncertainty and doubt. The very actions that people
criticize Microsoft for. We can do better than that.